School’s Out For Hughes And Salvidge

Hughes and Salvidge recently went back to school to help demolish Oaklands Community School in Southampton, a comprehensive project that has been covered in extensive detail by The Journal of the National Federation of Demolition Contractors Issue 1, 2014 as per below:  

Demolition and Dismantling specialist Hughes and Salvidge has recently completed the demolition of a school in Southampton. Originally opened in 1982, Oaklands Community School was a mixed comprehensive school for 11 to 16 year olds.

Despite its excellent academic performance Oaklands was closed in 2008 and the building temporarily taken over by Oasis Academy Lord’s Hill, a school specialising in Arts with Business and Enterprise. In 2012 the academy relocated to a purpose built facility with the original school building left vacant. The site was then sold for redevelopment subject to the demolition of the redundant school buildings with the exception of the disused community swimming pool immediately adjacent to the structure. Hughes and Salvidge commenced the 14 week project by securing the site and soft-stripping the school’s internal fixtures and fittings.

Shortly after, worked commenced on demolishing the southern portion of the school utilising a 25 tonne Hitachi excavator. Equipped with a pulveriser attachment, the Zaxis 5 made steady progress munching through the building section by section. Another Zaxis 25 was utilised on site for secondary demolition duties including segregating the various waste streams, stock piling material and loading separate hook bins with scrap and wood. Given the site’s location, this phase of the project presented several challenges as Martyn Burnett, director of Hughes and Salvidge explains.

“The school was surrounded by residential dwellings and immediately adjacent to an Infant School and Nursery. Thanks to our ongoing investment in the new plant and equipment we were able to deploy modern, low-emission excavators on the project including a new dash five Hitachi excavator which is very quiet and clean-burning. This machine is one of 5 new dash fives we have purchased and prove invaluable on sensitive projects like this one.

“In addition to the modern plant, we were particularly rigorous in ensuring dust suppression was used throughout the demolition phase and also made use of access points furthest away from the school and nursery.”

Whilst conventional demolition techniques were deployed to dispatch a majority of the structure, a more delicate approach had to be taken by Hughes and Salvidge when demolishing the section of the condemned building which was directly connected to the swimming pool. “Although the school’s swimming pool was closed to the community in 2008, there are plans to re-open it as a community-run pool with the assistance of the local council. Because the swimming pool roof’s was supported in part by a wall that had to be demolished we had to install temporary support columns to prop the pools’ building whilst this could be carried out.”

Because we are involved in processing demolition waste, namely scrap metal through our H and S Metals facility in Portsmouth and concrete crushing at our K and B crushing facility on Southampton Docks, we can ensure material is collected, transported and processed in a timely and environmentally sound manner. Martyn Burnett – Director of Hughes and Salvidge

A minimum of 95% of all the material is generated by the school’s demolition is expected to be recycled with a majority of the disposal carried out by specialist sub-divisions of the Hughes and Salvidge business including H and S Metals and K and B crushing.

With the swimming pool secure and intact, and the rest of the site safely levelled, the local council is now in a position to re-develop the land and assist with providing the local community a much-needed recreational facility in the guise of a new reconditioned swimming pool.